Not only have politicians noticed this, but the conniving little jerks have already started framing the problem in a way that implies EVs should be paying far more than gas cars.
Many states are pushing for tag fees based upon the average revenue per gas/disel vehicle per year without regard to those vehicles MPG. Given that a lot of EVs are replacing high MPG vehicles, the formulations are incredibly unfair.
But they still have a few years before EV owners are a substantial constituency, so there's a chance to jam through unfair taxation (in the false name of fairness) before that happens.
I am not a civil engineer, but it's frequently cited in these discussions that road damage goes up as a function of the 4th power of vehicle weight[0].
A Rivian R1T has a curb weight of 7148lbs [1], a 4wd Chevy Silverado 1500 has a curb weight of 4826 lbs [2]. I think an increased registration fee is more than fair. Hell, do it for all vehicles if you want to make it really fair. We drive far larger vehicles in the US than necessary.
> Many states are pushing for tag fees based upon the average revenue per gas/disel vehicle per year without regard to those vehicles MPG. Given that a lot of EVs are replacing high MPG vehicles, the formulations are incredibly unfair.
Is it, though? Does the taxation rate matter more than the total collected per year distributed by the number of users? If you aren’t counting/won’t count miles driven, this seems like a fair alternative. The idea isn’t to tax 21 cents a gallon - that’s the implementation detail - the idea is to collect $xx billion a year to (ostensibly) pay for transportation related costs.
To use a logical proof instead, assume all cars are converted to EV with the flick of a wand. Do you think your proposal would seriously last? The same amount (modulo some percentage) needs to be collected to pay for whatever costs are relying on that tax to be funded. The rate (not the total price) has to go up for EV users.
Now if gas at the pump included an explicit carbon tax then absolutely, that shouldn’t be ported over to the rate EV users are charged.
> Is it, though? Does the taxation rate matter more than the total collected per year distributed by the number of users?
I'd agree with that, if it were applied fairly. Drop the gas tax and switch to $/car across the board. Alternatively, develop a new formula based purely upon vehicle weight[1].
But instead, they just want EVs, including things like Nissan Leaf, to pay the same as the average. In my state, the average is a lot closer to an F-150 doing 15k/year than it is to a Corolla.
This is just punitive to the EV owner.
[1] As it is, mpg correlates strongly with weight, so gar cars effectively already get taxed based upon a combination of weight and miles driven. The challenge is to figure out a reasonable, non-punitive approach to doing the same for EVs. At least in "anti-EV" states, it is very obvious that there is no attempt to do that.
Many states are pushing for tag fees based upon the average revenue per gas/disel vehicle per year without regard to those vehicles MPG. Given that a lot of EVs are replacing high MPG vehicles, the formulations are incredibly unfair.
But they still have a few years before EV owners are a substantial constituency, so there's a chance to jam through unfair taxation (in the false name of fairness) before that happens.